


angry pete

by watergator



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2015 Era (Phandom), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23518507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watergator/pseuds/watergator
Summary: some plane rides aren't very fun
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 11
Kudos: 151





	angry pete

Phil doesn’t like planes.

He enjoys the travel along with the promise that once you get on one, you’re going to touch down someplace else, even if it’s one country over from your own.

He likes the excitement of holidays and visiting new places, or even Vidcon, even when it makes him a tad anxious. It’s still an exciting thing to imagine how many people are genuinely looking forward to meeting him in the flesh — how many people get to smile and laugh with him and thank him for absolutely nothing.

The worst of it is over when they’ve passed through security, handed over their passports and paperwork that Phil’s glad he’d managed to file away in one pikachu shaped folder, even if Dan enjoys teasing him for it. 

They get past the gates, check their luggage in, Dan waves it goodbye as it disappears through the flaps that eat it up, and Phil spends the walk from the lounge to the plane thinking about that one scene from Toy Story 2.

He realises he’s zoning out when he bumps into the back of Dan where they’re standing on the steps, climbing upwards as they wait to take their seats.

Dan turns his head to face him. He says nothing but gives his a smile and a huff of air escapes his nose as he lets out a slight laugh.

Phil does the same, watching Dan turn back around as the line moves up.

When they take their seats, Phil lets out a long, much needed exhale of air.

He’s already digging through their shared backpack, already in need of his headphones, praying to whatever god that he remembered to pack them.

His fingers curl around the strap and he’s yanking them out just as he hears Dan give a soft giggle.

He turns his head to look at him; there’s more and more people appearing now, some wonder up and down the aisle as they look for their seats.

“What?” Phil asks, voice hushed.

Dan is still grinning when he takes the bag from Phil’s grasp and starts to dig for his own headphones.

“Nothing,” he smiles. “You’re such a freak when it comes to planes.”

He eventually finds them as he pulls them out and lets the bag drop to their feet. Phil lets out a small huff of frustration as he reaches down and scoops it back up. He hadn’t even bothered with the zip.

He’s tugging it close when Dan laughs again.

This time he has the headphones fitted snugly on his ears, jabbing it into the bottom of his phone. Phil reaches over and pulls one side away from his head to tell him.

“I’m not a freak.”

Dan snorts. “Yeah you are mate. Such a freak. You have like an anti plane kink, that’s how much of a freak you are.”

Phil frowns, and Dan just laughs again, and before Phil can even ask what that even means, there’s a sound of disgust coming from the other side of him.

Phil whips around to see a middle aged man sat beside just on the other side of him. Of course, they’re separated by the barrier but he’s still close enough to hear them, and for them to hear him.

In a matter of a few terrifying seconds, they make brief eye contact, Phil eventually looks away when it seems the man doesn’t care about being caught looking at him.

Phil glances back at Dan; his headphones are back over his head and he’s busy tapping away at his phone, probably looking for one specific playlist. Phil pulls his headphones over his ears and lets himself be indulged in the Steven Universe soundtrack.

*

The flight to Florida isn’t unfamiliar to him, all the years he’s spent back and forth to that one state that connects with a warm sea and an even warmer sky, and yet, he still bores easily of the journey.

He gets bored of listening to the same songs over and over again. He rinses the movie selection dry, leaving only a few crap ones that not even he dares to watch, even just to pass time.

He ends up storing his headphones away in the overhead locker and goes through his phone notes in an attempt to get some video ideas out of his brain finally.

He’s already made a two page list when suddenly there’s an elbow in his ribs and he’s snapping his head towards where Dan’s sat.

“Are you still gonna film that video idea you had?”

His voice is loud, probably too loud from where he’s still listening to music, trying to overpower both that and the sound of the jet that’s humming around them.

Phil tuts, a flick of his eyes as he once again pulls Dan’s headphones off his head.

“You’re yelling,” he tells him. Dan shoots him a wonky smile. 

“Soz,” he quips back, clearly uncaring. “Are you though?”

Phil chews on the inside of his cheek before answering.

“Will it be weird?” He asks, voice low. “I hate vlogging anyway, and a plane seems a little too contained for all that.”

Dan looks at him before turning his head around as if he were scanning the place.

“Phil,” he says, settling back to smile at him. “Nobody is paying attention to you. Besides, we have these beautiful big walls to keep us safe.”

He says whilst patting the plastic barriers that separate the pair of them from any other passenger.

Phil bites his cheek harder this time. He thinks about the man on the other side of his wall.

“Yeah but. That’s the point. What if people realise we’re… you know….”

The words don’t come as easily as they would if they were really alone. He might be speaking quietly enough for nobody to pay attention to him, but it still feels exposed.

Here, there’s nowhere to really hide.

“What? Sharing a seat?” Dan prompts.

He’s not sure how he can say it so…  _ casually _ like that.

He nods.

“It’s just a business seat, babe, I doubt anyone will care.”

It’s not just a business seat. It’s a  _ couples  _ seat. It’s made for two people. Two people who aren’t  _ just  _ friends.

Dan must be able to read his mind, probably the way he’s chewing up his bottom lip, so he sighs and offers him a gentle smile.

“You don’t have to film anything you don’t want to,” he tells him softly. “I’m sorry.”

Dan doesn’t have to apologise. Not really.

Phil sighs and smiles back, though, it doesn’t quite feel real enough.

“I’m just tired. And anxious.”

Dan must be feeling the opposite as he reaches over and takes Phil’s hand in his, wrapping it up in his big warm fingers and giving it a small squeeze.

“I’m here. We’re okay, yeah?” He smiles.

Phil looks at how their hands are entertained; it’s something they rarely get to do in public.

He looks back up at Dan and is able to give him a more proper smile this time.

“Yeah,” he croaks. “We’re okay.”

*

They have dinner and watch another movie again. The lights are eventually dimmed and it appears more and more people are starting to go to bed.

An air hostess comes around offering extra blankets.

Phil holds his breath once she begins to approach them, but Dan squeezes his hand again and smiles politely at her, telling her that they’re fine to share, and won’t be needing anything else.

It feels like a huge step. It also feels like his heart is about to leap out of his chest and into his mouth where he might puke it out right onto the floor.

But it also feels nice.

It feels nice when Dan takes their beige and boring looking blanket and drapes it over themselves. It feels nice when their thighs press up against each other as Dan resumes the movie, and neither of them have to move for a little while.

Maybe he will film that plane vlog, Phil thinks to himself. He finds Dan’s hand under the cocoon of fuzziness, linking their fingers together, vowing to himself to never let go.

*

Dan falls asleep just as the credits roll. His head is tipped back, his lips are slightly parted, and despite the low, ever persistent sound of the plane being hurtled through the sky, Phil can hear the familiar sounds of his soft snores.

He smiles to himself before he reaches for his phone. He takes a quick photo before anyone can notice. He smiles to himself as he looks over at it.

Then, like an angry bull bursting through his little bubble of happiness, he hears a loud scoffing sound.

Phil freezes before looking back around. Of course it’s the same man as before. He’s looking at Phil before his eyes flicker between Dan and the phone in his hand, face scrunched up with disgust.

Phil can’t even figure out how to form proper words. It seems he doesn’t even have to since the man scoffs again, and brings up the partition that separates them.

Phil looks back down at his phone where the photo is Dan is still glaring up at him. His thumb hovers over the delete button for a moment, tempted to just bin it and never think about what happened ever again.

But he doesn’t. He leaves the photo be and instead locks his phone and chucks it back onto the table in front of him.

He looks back at Dan before digging his head back into the headrest and squeezing his eyes shut, willing sleep to come to him.

*

Dan’s awake and Phil’s awake. A jolt of the plane had Dan scrambling in his seat, but Phil on the other hand hadn’t even managed to pass out just yet.

And now, Dan’s the opposite of sleepy.

He’s bored.

“Do you wanna watch another film?” He asks. He’s shoving another jelly baby into his mouth before rattling the bag under Phil’s nose as part of an offering.

Phil shakes his head to both.

“No,” he sighs. “Got a headache,” he tells him weakly.

He glances at Dan to catch him giving him a sorry kind of look.

“Still feeling anxious?” Dan asks, swallowing down his sweets. “Or just the plane?”

Phil pushes his glasses off his face. “Bit of both I guess.”

Dan smiles thinly at him. “You sure a baby won’t help?”

Phil looks at him; his palm is outstretched and there sits a little green and demented looking jelly baby.

Phil manages a small laugh. “He’s hideous.”

Dan gasps, an exaggerated reaction of horror.

“He’s our son!” He cries. “Now eat him, you hurt his feelings.”

Phil smiles at Dan, and it feels like a proper smile this time. He takes the treat from his hand and pops it into his mouth. As soon as the sugar hits him, he does seem to feel a little better.

“I have hot towels too,” Dan tells him, picking them out from the chair in front. “Need one for your head?”

He’s already ripped the packet open but Phil’s smiling again. 

“Nuh uh. Let me film us,” he tells him, already grabbing his bag in lieu of his camera. “I don’t wanna wait until we’re too tired again.”

It’s true; he loves capturing this kind of energy.

Dan messes around with the hot towel whilst Phil unpacks the small vlogging camera they have.

He turns it on them, adjusting the sound and making sure it’s recording when Dan looks over at him and starts to hum.

It appears he doesn’t seem to notice it’s already recording, and Phil holds his best straight face in order to keep hold of the candid moment they’re having right now.

Except, it doesn’t last.

There’s the sound of the same partition window being snapped back down, and when it does Phil jumps, making the camera fall clumsily into his lap. 

Dan goes to laugh but it catches in his throat when the man suddenly speaks, his words spat from such a horrible and angry mouth.

“Can you for the love of  _ god,  _ just be quiet?”

Phil’s so afraid he can’t even look round to see Dan’s reaction. Either way, he’s just as quiet as he is.

“All I’ve heard is you two going on and on and on,” the man snarls. He’s so angry looking with his face turning red and his eyes small and almost black. Kind of like a great white shark.

“It’s bad enough having to…” he waves a fat hand around in the air. “Having to sit next to people like  _ you  _ anyways,” he spits again, this time looking then both up and down with a face of disgust. “The least you could do is shut up.”

Phil just sits there. Looking at the man. He looks at him until tears blur his vision, and continues to sit in silence until the divider is pulled back up and Phil blinks away any tears threatening to spill.

He can’t even look at Dan right now. He’s not sure he’d manage to look at him without actually crying.

Instead he picks his phone back up off the table, attempts to unlock it three times until Dan takes it from his hands. When he hands it back over, the notes app is back open. 

At the top of the page it reads:

_ are you okay? ❤️ _

Phil really wants to cry.

Instead, he types back.

_ No :( I’m sorry _

He passes it back to Dan without looking up. He hears him tapping away and when he’s handed the phone back he looks at the message and feels his heart grip tightly in his chest.

_ don’t worry about him. he’s a prick. i love you :) _

Phil doesn’t write it back. He doesn’t even need to say it. He looks up at Dan through blurred vision where tears are still burning behind his eyes, and he smiles at him. Dan smiles softly back. It’s barely there, timid and unsure, but it’s there. 

He keeps the note nestled in between his ribs where his heart lies, and closes his eyes.

*

When he wakes up again it’s because his body is no longer tired.

He’s not sure how long he’s slept; overnight plane journeys are the one of the places that time doesn’t seem to exist. 

He’s awake and he needs to sleep. His legs hurt and his back feels like paper that’s been folded over and over again and all he wants is to keep the outside world out, and his sleep playlist in.

He goes to reach for his headphones before remembering he’d shoved them in the overhead storage earlier on, only because the backpack was shoved under his seat and out of reach.

He sighs, chewing on his lip before he stands and decides to fully commit to grabbing his headphones.

He has them in his hands, he’s already thinking about which song he’ll start with, when suddenly like an act of god, the plane jolts violently and Phil’s tripping over his own feet, his hands fly out on instinct.

But he doesn’t fall over — the plane rights itself and everything settles.

Everything but his headphones.

They slip from the storage, and Phil can only watch as it all unfolds in slow motion.

They fall through the air, twirling and twisting like some beautiful display of art.

It lands right into the belly of the man from earlier, startling him from his sleep.

Phil’s holding his breath as the man snaps his eyes open and he’s quick to snap his gaze up in Phil’s direction.

This time, Phil is able to make words form and fall out of his mouth.

“I’m so sorry,” he splutters. “There was turbulence.”

It’s not even a lie, but the man doesn’t look convinced nor does he look like he’s going to start being kind whatsoever.

“I should have asked to have you two moved,” he grunts. “You’ve done nothing but  _ spoil _ this flight for me. I paid for these seats you know.”

Phil has to bite his tongue. He knows he paid for them. They also did pay for them. And they’ve barely done anything wrong.

Well. Anything that Phil would  _ merit _ as wrong.

He thinks he has a clear idea as to why this guy doesn’t like them.

He practically throws his headphones at him. “Fucking twat,” he mumbles under his breath.

Phil hears it, loud and clear, even over the thumping of his own heart.

“I said I was sorry,” he tries.

The man gives him another disgusted look before snickering.

“You can shove your apology up your arse, mate,” he says through gritted teeth. His eyes flicker to where Dan’s sleeping and then back at Phil. “Though, I’m sure you and your little pally over there would like that, wouldn’t you?”

Phil doesn’t respond. 

He doesn’t even apologise again. 

He sits back down, plugs his headphones back in and tries to drown out the sound of blood rushing to his head with his relaxation playlist.

He looks at Dan who’s so blissfully unaware of everything. He goes to reach for his hand, but he can’t. He tucks it under his leg and takes a shaky breath in, and another shaky breath out.

*

The Florida hotel room feels like Florida.

The sheets smell like Florida, the air smells like Florida, and when Phil flops face first into the pillow, it definitely tastes like Florida.

He can hear the sound of shuffling coming from behind him; the gentle way Dan pulls their suitcases into the room, unzipping them and humming to himself as he unpacks.

It’s always the first thing he does when they get into their new room: he makes it their space.

And right now, Phil needs that. He needs the familiarity of their space, and he needs Dan.

He rolls onto his back and watches him, pottering around the room. He grabs their clothes and adds them to the wardrobe; a mishmash of their belongings in a rainbow of clothing, dotted with black, because it’s Dan obviously.

“He was homophobic,” Phil finds himself saying after a long while of nothing.

Dan’s shoulders tense and he stops for a moment before he’s shoving the hanger into the arm of his potato jumper.

“He was a dickhead,” Dan counters. Phil can tell he’s trying to play it off, but his voice gives it away.

It always does.

“He yelled at me,” Phil tells him. “He was so mean.”

He feels sad again now. Sad because he wanted to enjoy their plane time together. Sad because sometimes it just hurts to be reminded that some people are just cruel for the fun of it.

Sad because even now with himself being mostly out to a lot of the people in his life, he has to be reminded why he’s sometimes scared to live that life a little more freely.

He looks at where Dan’s folding up their swim shorts, making a neat pile on the shelf.

There’s so many reasons they don’t live that life freely, and he knows a lot of those reasons come from Dan’s own thoughts - and that’s he’s fine with.

He’d wait until he were eighty if it meant Dan being able to figure it all out first.

But sometimes it’s things like that that frighten him that maybe they’ll never be ready.

“He was so horrid, Dan,” he croaks. He won’t cry, mostly because he’s too tired and he’s past the point of humiliation and fear.

Now he just feels drained.

Dan stops what he’s doing and turns to face him. He looks just as sad as Phil feels.

“I know,” Dan sighs heavily. “We should have complained.”

Phil looks up at the ceiling. “Would we have done though?” He asks in a small voice. “ _ Could  _ we have?”

There’s no response from Dan, and after a long stretch of silence, Phil looks up onto the see where Dan’s closing the gap between himself and the bed as he crawls on top, shuffling closer to Phil’s outstretched body.

“I dunno,” Dan whispers, laying down next to Phil, looking up at the same ceiling.

“It’s a bit scary, innit?”

Phil swallows thickly. “I hate being reminded that sometimes the world can be mean,” he whispers.

Dan lets out a dry laugh. “It’s the worst.”

Phil turns his head to look at him and Dan does the same.

“Are you sad?” Phil asks, frowning so hard he might actually leave marks.

Dan gives him a half smile. “Yeah, Phil. I’m sad.”

He hates that. He hates feeling sad. He hates Dan feeling sad.

He reaches over and cups his face. “It’ll get better, yeah?” He croaks, running his thumb over his cheekbones.

Dan hums and smiles. “I hope so.”

Phil smiles back.

“Let’s not be sad,” Phil whispers.

The aircon is running and the sound of the world is buzzing outside their window. He needs to peel his jeans off his body because they get fused to his skin with sweat, and he wants to drink something fruity and fun with Dan until one of them is responsible enough to decide to head back where they can crawl back into this very bed and just sleep the night away.

Dan covers Phil’s hand with his own and lets out a small sigh. 

“Let’s just be sad for a little bit, yeah?” He says quietly, his voice cracks just slightly. “Then we can go have fun.”

Phil smiles and closes his eyes, shuffling forward until his head meets Dan’s chest, tucking himself up beside him. 

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Just for a little bit.”

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on tumblr !! @watergator


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